


kylo ben and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad redemption arc

by indications



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22459495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indications/pseuds/indications
Summary: i am not a sw fan. i've seen most of the films once or twice, and little stuck with me. but that sad hand touch though. now, i know what you're thinking. redeem the genocider? i thinks thee fuck not. do love that sad, sad hand touch though.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. episode 1: our heroes establish themselves on luke skywalker's rock post TROS i guess (finn and rey aren't staying)

**Author's Note:**

> im aware there are refs to like. dogs and bears and stuff thats presumably Star Wars Space Animals. but get this. jj abrams didnt care about SW worldbuilding and neither do i

Kylo Ren (or, okay, ‘Ben Solo’, or just ‘Ben’ at least, if Finn can’t stomach him taking back the Solo name after he killed the man who gave it to him. He’s not sure about that yet – he’s not sure how he feels about fathers generally – but Poe’s made his stance clear so, yeah. Just Ben for now) looks at Finn like he’s hiding a blaster.

No, no, okay. He looks like Finn’s holding a blaster in plain view, like that’s intimidating (they both know an actual blaster would be, what, zero threat? less than zero?). Like Finn’s holding him hostage. Like Finn’s holding a child with a blaster to their head as a hostage, like Finn’s still a Storm Trooper and Kylo-Ben was never a Sith overlord. What even was his actual title? By the time he’d had a chance at the throne, Finn was out of the loop on who-ranked-what. ‘Hey, you ever make Supreme Leader?’ That’d be a weird thing to say. And it isn’t what Finn came here to say. He looks at Ben ( _Ben, Ben, Ben_ , he repeats to himself, because although when it’s just him, or when it’s just him and Poe, it’s Kylo Ren all the way, right now he’s in Rey’s territory, which is to say, he’s in Ben’s territory, which Rey is the keeper-guardian of).

“Hey,” he says, which is a really good and neutral thing to say.

Ben says nothing.

“How’s,” he says, trying to smile, “How’s it going.”

Ben keeps looking at him like Finn’s holding a blaster on a kid Ben cares about, and the wrong move could end said kid’s life. Okay, yeah, Finn knows why he’s getting into I-was-a-Trooper headspace, and it’s not actually the held-hostage look he’s getting.

“Heard you were moping,” he continues. This is not going great. But nothing with Kyl- with Ben has been going that great, recently. ( _Ben, Ben, Ben_.) The Jedi training, the meditating, the acting-like-a-real-person. The whole Thing. Rey’s at the end of her rope. Finn is doing some pinch-hitting. He and Ben are going to be pals by the end of this. For sure.

“What do you want,” Ben says. Not ‘asks’. Definitely not ‘asks’. You could almost swing ‘accuses’, although the words don’t really leave room for all that. Not that Ben’s not trying. With his voice, and also with his face, which is less ‘scared Finn’s gonna blast his metaphorical kid’ and now more ‘cornered street dog thinking about biting’.

“Just thought I’d check in.” Finn squats nonchalantly. There’s no furniture in the room. Hut. Thing. It’s all very mind-over-matter, one-in-the-Force-y kind of. Bare. It wouldn’t be so bad, really, if he was sitting with his legs crossed and a clean Padawan’s robe on, but for some reason Ren’s huddled in the corner looking like he hasn’t been allowed daylight or, uh, soap, in a long long time, like he’s Rey’s prisoner. Actually he could leave his little hidey-hole anytime, but instead he’s sulking. Also, now that Finn’s crouched down closer to him, it really kinda smells.

‘Wash your hair, please, or at least your pits, I am begging you,’ Finn doesn’t say. He thinks it pretty hard for a second, and breathes through his mouth instead of his nose. He’s definitely smelled worse things in his life but somehow the fact that Ben’s doing it on purpose makes it grosser. Is it penance-smelly, this thing he’s doing? Not washing till he’s earned it or something? He’d say something to Ben’s face, but Rey would be annoyed, and he’s doing this right now as a favor to her. (He’ll just have a good laugh with Poe later.)

“So,” he says. “You know. You doing okay out here?”

“Go away,” Kylo-Ben says, and he turns his back on Finn. Like, literally physically turns himself away, in his stupid little hut-corner. He’s got his arms crossed like he’s having to restrain himself from attacking, and here Finn is being nicer to him than a good, oh, 99% of the living Galaxy would be if given half a chance. So, no. Not going away. But also though? Not really making a dent in the moping. Kind of just making him double down. That’s been Rey’s struggle, apparently, too. Give him a kind word, some encouragement, bit of direction – he just goes on with the brooding, occasionally mixing it up with random tantrums.

All this, Finn expected. Unlike the rest of them, he’d seen (alright, mostly heard of) Kylo Ren since he first defected from the Jedi as a kid. Finn had been a kid, then, too, and it’d been exciting news for all of them – proof of the supremacy of the Order that even a young one like them was important, celebrated, wanted. A cog in the great righteous _fuck-all, quit thinking about it_ , he interrupts himself. Kid Ben made a wrong choice. Adult Ben made a right one. Lot of tantrums that ended in random murder in between. (Lot of calculated murders also. Big theme with old Kylo.) Things are different now. No more murdering. Just clenching his fists and his teeth a lot, avoiding eye contact, hiding his face.

“Are you still here?” Ben growls at the stone wall he’s currently mashing his face into.

“You could come outside for a bit,” Finn says, like he didn’t hear him. “Sun’s still out. Might do you some good.”

“I don’t _want_. To come outside. _Leave me alone_ ,” he snarls.

“Take a nice walk,” Finn continues, “Smell the sea air…”

“Why are you doing this.”

“Rey’s getting tired of babysitting you,” he says.

Ben gulps audibly. “Good,” he chokes out. He sounds like Finn socked him in the gut. He mashes his face in the wall a little more. “Tell her not to come back.”

“Come tell her yourself,” Finn says. He stands up.

Ben doesn’t turn from the wall.

“Bennn,” he sing-songs. “Come on, buddy.”

Nope. Nothing.

“If you just walk _two steps_ outside this door, we can tell Rey we took a walk together. And it’ll be, technically, not really a lie. And we both want Rey to be happy, right?”

Nada. Zilch.

“Bennn,” he tries again. Okay, he’s not really trying, at this point, he’s pretty much just teasing. It feels good, though. This guy personally slaughtered _hundreds_ , at least, all innocent, and ordered _millions_ more to die. The whole Galaxy was shaped by this man’s rage, for a time, and now he’s cowering on an abandoned rock like he wants to be Luke Skywalker instead of Darth Vader. Finn can poke the bear a little. “I’m not gonna leave ‘till I get you to come outside.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time, then,” Ben says, and that’s the last he speaks for a good hour.

The thing is, Finn’s been trapped on this rock, _actually_ trapped, while Rey tries to settle Ben in and make sure he’s not a threat to himself. Finn doesn’t think she’s worried about him literally committing suicide so much as sliding too deep into the shadows of grief, shame, rage, regret – all paths to the Dark Side. Is he ready to be on his own? Is there enough of a person left to climb out of the black pit he dug inside himself? Very scary stuff. Also, can he even feed himself out here? Did Kylo Ren ever learn to cook?

Rey’s trying to teach him everything about being human all at once, and Ben’s just. Not great at it. So it’s been three standard weeks since the three of them arrived, and Finn’s mostly been staying out of their way while they do their thing. It seems like their routine is: Rey tries spoon-feed him Basic Human Person Skills and Ben spits it back in her face and then they scream at each other for a while, one of them storms off, both of them have a good frustration-cry, and they restart again all puffy-eyed and irritable. They hold hands really tenderly and meditate for a while. They have another screaming match. Rey tries to get him to do Jedi Things with her, Ben refuses. Probably, at some point, Rey tries to get him to wash, Ben also refuses.

Rey’s been coming back to the ship pissed off and sad and worried, sometimes ranting for an hour about how badly it’s going, sometimes just folding into Finn’s arms exhausted. They sleep. She gets up and tries again. Progress, it seems, is just knowing Ben’s _watched her do_ all the things he’ll need to be able to do himself out here. Maintaining the sand filter by the spring. Catching fish, cleaning fish, cooking fish. (They’re also leaving him with rations. Nostalgic and strange, for her, these little packets that used to be life or death, and the things she had to do to get her hands on them.) Working on the amphibious speeder she’s leaving him, in case calamity strikes or the sea is calm. Staying calm, letting oneself feel feelings without resisting or panicking or lashing out at whatever’s nearby.

It’s not clear how well Ben’s actually absorbing any of this. Rey’s not ready to leave him on his own, but this morning she rolled over next to Finn and pressed her face into the cot and mumbled, “Let him mope.” She let him kiss her head and rub her back and told him she was all right, really, just tired, and she stayed curled in the cot when he got up. Asleep again, or pretending for privacy. So he left, and he hiked the hill up to Ben’s little hut, and he decided to try his own strategy.

So, while Rey’s finally taking a well-deserved day off, Finn’s making more trouble for her. And/or, he’s teaching Ben in his own way. He knows Ben’s never had to deal with a good-natured needling, partly because of his habit of murdering or maiming anybody that annoyed him, and partly because he’s too fundamentally unlikeable to get a ‘good-natured’ anything out of anybody. But Poe’s taught him a bit of teasing is good for the soul, and if saving Ben’s sad, shriveled soul is truly Rey’s mission, Finn’s gonna do his part.

He lets Ben sit and brood for a while, and he moves to the doorway to get a little fresh air. Then he digs a handful of stones out of the dirt around the hut and, one by one, tosses them into Ben’s corner. A few hit his leg. A few hit his boot. A lot bounce off the floor or the wall near him. One lands in his lap. Finn sings a couple of Resistance songs, badly: the we’ll-hoist-the-victory-banner-come-dawn one and the my-lover-waits-for-me-back-home one with all the dirty verses Poe’s taught him. He doesn’t sing the only other one he knows, because it’s partly in Andalusian and he’s not prepared to chance Ren ( _Ben_ ) knowing the language better than him and laughing. Although, actually, maybe even that would count as progress.

He’s on verse two of the Andalusian one when a rock zings past his ear.

Ben’s still got his forehead against the wall. He’s gripping his robe in his fists so tight he’s shaking.

Finn starts to whistle the rest.

Another rock shoots by, this one _barely_ grazing his temple.

He stops whistling.

“Bugging you?”

Nothing.

“Okay, well, I’m gonna keep on, then.” 

He barely purses his lips to whistle when another rock shoots into the air. This one just hovers threateningly by Ben’s shoulder.

“Gonna shut me up?”

He’s not, is the thing. Kylo Ren couldn’t shut him up and Ben (Solo? Organa?) can’t, either.

He whistles a note and the rock zooms straight for his face. Stops there.

Finn doesn’t even flinch. He really wishes someone else saw that. He doesn’t even fucking _flinch_ , he just looks at the rock and takes a deep breath, slowly lets it out. “You are really annoying me,” he says. He takes another deep breath. Sighs it out. “Hmm. I am one with the Force, and I am not disturbed by your tantrum. I am going to continue serenading you now.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ooh, the Padawan speaks.”

“FN-287,” he spits, like it’s the worst slur he can think of.

“ _Wow_. Hell of a promotion. Thank you, Lord Ren.” (Three-digit Troopers are Captains. Fewer of them around. You got assigned an entirely new number when you made the jump, though, so not much chance of ending up with one so close to his old designation.)

“What?”

“I was FN-2187. Big difference.”

“I never bothered to learn,” he says, reaching _way_ too hard for the you're-beneath-me tone. Yeah, Finn gets what he’s trying to do, but it’s so weak it’s funny. Kind of sad and childish. But funny.

“Obviously.”

“Neither did you. I wouldn’t be ‘Lord Ren’, I-”

“Don’t care.”

Ben whips his head around. His greasy hair lashes him in the face and partly sticks there. He leaves it, black strands stuck to his cheek and getting in his mouth, too, it looks like. Gross. Does that not bother him?

“Usually, when people wanna insult me based on the ex-Trooper thing, they go for ‘traitor’. I guess I appreciate the effort, though. Nobody’s bothered promoting me. It actually _is_ insulting, come to think of it,” he muses. “If I’d obeyed orders and stayed in, I probably _could_ be a Captain right now.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ben hisses.

“Force sensitive,” Finn says cheerfully, wiggling his fingers next to the rock still parked in front of his face. “Comes in handy. I’m a damn good shot, too.”

“You’re too troublesome to be a Storm Trooper. Much less a Captain.”

“Thank you.”

Ben glowers.

“For what it’s worth, you’re too sensitive to be a good Sith Lord.”

The rock pecks him right in the nose, hard enough to sting. He chucks the rest of his handful and they scattershot around Ben. He leaps up, and Finn scrambles away on reflex, staggering backward.

Ben seems to realize what he’s doing halfway through doing it (namely, Finn’s 99% sure, attempting murder). He loses his momentum in a couple of paces. Blinks.

“Nice weather we’re having,” Finn says.

Ben looks at the sky. Squints.

Before he can scurry back to his smelly sadness cave, Finn closes the distance between them. Claps him on the shoulder. Opens his mouth to say something about how they can really tell Rey that story about taking a walk together now that Ben’s made it outside. Chokes, Force-constricted throat closing on half a breath.

Ben’s face is white and his eyes are bloodshot and a lock of hair is stuck in the corner of his mouth. He seems not to notice it. For a weird second, that’s all Finn notices. He’s calm, for some reason. He looks at Ben’s scarred, scared face and his lank, unwashed hair all oil-shiny in the sunlight. His hand is a trembling claw, clutching distance to Finn’s throat.

He releases it. Finn takes a calm, slow lungful of air and doesn’t lose his footing. His hand on Ben’s shoulder gives another weak pat.

“Progress,” he rasps.

Ben whirls around and flees back to his shame corner.

Massaging his throat, Finn leaves him to it.

He meets Rey on the path back to the ship. She looks better today. Tired, but resolved. The rest did her good.

He convinces her to join him instead of going up to Ben. They walk the island some. Finn can’t stop clearing his throat, but he tells Rey he just swallowed a bug or something. She can tell he’s lying, and he can tell she can tell, but she doesn’t press him. He tells her about singing Rebel songs at Ben’s door like he was giving a romantic serenade, and she laughs for real, like she hasn’t laughed in a while, and then she tries to help him sing the Andalusian parts right. She doesn’t even speak it, but she’s got this knack for language. She’s got a knack for teaching, too, and for kindness, and her voice is beautiful. He tells her so. She looks sad, but she lets him kiss her, and then they kiss for a while, there by the sea under the slow-setting sun. It’ll get better, he tells her, and she says she knows it will.

In the morning, she tries again. 


	2. BONUS CONTENT: EPISODES 3-7 PROBABLY. i am not actually gonna do this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's funny. to me. fuck it :)

imagine if a soul was split into two. Not halves, necessarily. two unequal portions. one with strength and brashness and vulnerability and adaptability and humor, and one cowardly, self-loathing and weak. ‘the dark and the light side’, a jedi might say.

“I can’t keep carrying this,” Rey says. “Your shame, your rage, your grief – it’s not mine. I won’t carry it anymore.”

“I know,” Ben says, tear-filled like a jelly donut is jelly-filled, sniffling a snot trail partway back up his nose. “It’s my fault.”

“I was gonna get laid,” Rey mourns. “I was gonna fuck the hottest couple in the Galaxy.”

“Trust me,” Ben says. “We could both stand to get laid.”

“Stop saying weird shit to me, you’re like my horrible older brother with acne.”

“I _wash_ ,” Ben says. “It’s part of my character arc, the hygiene. I’m learning to boil water.”

“Learn on your own, asshole,” Rey abruptly cries, stripping off her Jedi tunic in one fervent, impassioned throw. “I’m gonna go get my cake and eat it too!” So saying, she swan-dives into the waiting arms of Finn and Poe Dameron. Who are married. Finn’s last name is also Dameron, in case that wasn’t clear. Poe and Finn Dameron. Mr. and Mr. Dameron. Generals Dameron. The Dameron Boys.

“Please stop letting him do that,” Ben says, squirming a bit in his deteriorating meditation pose. “It’s ticklish.”

Rey, getting her neck and tiddies kissed by two hott boys: “No we like this.”

The Skywalker cousins get laid, Ben staying a virgin and a monk the whole time. It is socially awkward and takes over 40 pages to establish, position-wise. At some points, Ben is in the middle, as a Force ghost, and also inside Rey’s body, or rather, Rey’s body is at times inside his body? He’s never not a Force ghost. At other points, he is doing his laundry and trying not to look over his shoulder. At still others, he is meditating in a drippy sea-cave on Planet Luke-in-Exile (‘AHCH-TO’ (‘bless you’)), aloof to the implications and indeed the very underpinning context of Freudian psychology. There are implications, though. Boy are there ever. And the underpinnings? Sheesh. The fact that I’m doing a joke outline at all says very scary things about my intent to deliver on all this. Don’t you remember the shibito pwp? That sucker was 10k. this is looking bad. It is all slightly trans, is what I’m trying to get at here. I think.

TIME FOR ANOTHER SCENE. I CALL THIS ONE ‘THE GANG BULLIES KYLO REN PART 1 OF SEVERAL’

Rey isn’t sure if she sleeps, shallowly, or if her mind slowly turns her to the shadow at her bedside. She wouldn’t startle, but Ben does, and she feels it: he jolts upright beside her and the rush of his adrenaline stabs into her heart like a. She doesn’t think ‘lightsaber’. That’s not what it feels like. But every time their connection surprises him there’s a faction of a second where she’s holding the beam of his saber straight through him. A fraction of a second where he’s just done the same, with hers, to Snoke. A fraction of a fraction. And it’s gone. And two short, shallow breaths and he catches himself, forces a slow exhale, glances over at her like she can’t feel his sweat on her chest, the chill sea air washing into the room with his presence.

It’s stronger each time, somehow. She wonders why he bothers wanting her there physically. She may as well be.

“Morning,” she guesses, in the smallest whisper she can manage.

“Not yet,” he says. He looks at the small rectangle of window crowded with stars. The night is so clear, and the moon’s down already. The starlight glows.

They gaze out for a while in silence. She wants to sleep, but he never does when they’re connected.

She rolls over and tucks herself in against Finn.

He’s a shallow sleeper, and that wakes him enough that he lays an arm over her waist.

A little while, his warm breath on the top of her head. The smell of him. The soft bed and the soft blanket. Riches she treasures, again and again, wealthy now beyond her childhood dreams. Finn falls back to sleep easily.

Ben lies there in the cold dark looking at the stars, won’t close his eyes to them. She’s ready to roll over in irritation and tell him off for keeping her awake when at last he turns to face the wall, and her bedside. Their connection tends to place them as if on level ground together, so with her sleeping on a bed and him on the floor she’s a few feet above him.

They both try, stubbornly, to ignore each other. He tries to ignore Finn’s arm on his waist and she tries to ignore the hard ground and the chill on her back. They reach the end of their patience together.

Ben’s got nowhere to go, really, so he just sits up, wraps his blanket around himself, and crosses his legs as if to meditate. It’s a joke. The worst kind. He’s never succeeded at meditating her away, nor she him, and the harder they try the longer the connection holds them together. Still, there he is, facing away from her in the dark.

She rolls over slowly, gradually, easing Finn’s arm across her body to rest in her lap. She reaches a hand over to poke the top of his head.

He turns. It’s a bit comical, his face half-visible over the side of the bed. She makes a face at him. He stares at her a minute, as if he can’t decide what she’s doing, and then he makes a face back.

She pats the side of the bed.

“You know I can’t actually sit with you,” he says.

“Try it,” she whispers.

He shifts as if he’s really going to get up.

“Not with your actual body,” she whispers. “Try it with your – you know – your Force energy.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he whispers.

“You don’t have to whisper, too,” she whispers helpfully.

“I-” He frowns. “No. Nevermind. I’m going to meditate.”

“No you’re not,” she whispers. “You’re going to sit there and pretend to meditate while feeling sorry for yourself.”

“You’re going to wake him up if you keep talking to me,” Ben says.

On cue, Finn shifts in his sleep, rolling partway onto his back. His hand strokes across her stomach as he moves. Ben’s whole body goes tense. He’s a few inches taller, with his spine rigidly straightened, and he doesn’t relax again. He stays uncomfortably erect, closing his eyes a little too tightly. Rey can feel his bum going cold and she considers asking him to at least sit more comfortably, but she knows that will just make him dig his heels in further.

Resigned, she tries to wait him out. She is actually much, much better at meditating, and doing it in a cozy bed is rather easier than whatever it is Ben’s trying to do. Eventually, her calm seeps into him and he sags back against the wall, defeated. She reaches a hand out, slowly, and touches his head. His hair’s very soft. The pull of his yearning for her is almost dizzying. She curls her fingers in his hair. He leans into it.

There is another long while as they, conflicted, stay just as they are: if she lets go of him, the connection may well let them both alone. He knows she wants sleep, and privacy: she knows he wants a moment, just one more moment, with her there-not-there, touching him.

She draws her hand back.

They both wait.

He’s still there, leaning on the side of the bed.

She’s still just above him, just a few light-years away across space.

He rests his arm on the bed. It’s easy. He’s there beside her.

He looks over her, at Finn’s sleeping form. He’s warm, all along her side, the dip in the bed pulling her into him just a little.

When she looks at Ben again, he’s smiling that sad jealous smile he often wears when he’s pulled into the room with just the two of them. His heart is calm, though. Jealous, too, but in a new way maybe.

“He’s very beautiful,” he says softly.

She doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I’m glad for you, Rey,” he says. He lays back down. “I really am. I hope you know that.”

“I do know that.”

A while more. The air is chilly, and his blanket’s not enough to keep warm under. He’s got his boots and his cloak on, and his hood bunched around his ears. Sleeping uncomfortably helped train the mind, according to the old ways.

Rey prefers a decent bed, frankly.

The scale continues to tip till it’s unbalanced again, Ben’s breath slowing out, his hands folded on his chest. Rey finally sits up, her heart pounding.

“Will you _go to sleep_ ,” she hisses.

“I’m trying,” Ben intones, that horrid smoothed-over anger in his voice again. “Lay back down.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do,” Rey whispers. “Couldn’t you put a fire on or something! It’s freezing in here. There’s no use suffering.”

“I’m not trying to keep you here,” he says.

“I don’t care! You’re shivering to death on a rock and I’m trapped there too. It’s maddening.”

“Rey?” Finn sits up beside her.

“Fuck,” she murmurs. “Sorry.”

“Is he here?”

“Yeah.”

Finn squints around reflexively, catches her begin to laugh at him, and then holds a hand over his eyes, casting about dramatically. “Over there?”

“Right next to the bed,” she laughs.

Finn leans across her to swat around at the air.

“Lower.”

He leans over further, lying partway across her, and looks at the floor.

“Right there?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously? That’s creepy.”

“I didn’t _choose_ to be here,” Ben protests, as though Finn can hear him.

“All right. Just forget it,” Rey grumbles. “It’s bloody freezing on that island right now is all and he’s just lying on the floor moping.”

“Tell him to put a blanket on.”

“This is part of my Jedi training!” Ben protests, having at least the decency to feel utterly humiliated the second the words burst from his mouth. Rey, being the bigger man, only laughs for a moment.

“There aren’t any others. He’s just going to have to freeze.”

“Ben,” Finn says, loud and clear and deadly serious. He holds up his pillow. “Go. Away.”

He drops the pillow. It lands right through where Ben’s head would be.

He’s gone.

Ray gasps aloud.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You’re not messing with me?”

“He just disappeared!”

They stare together at a space now quite unoccupied to either’s eyes.

“Huh. Gonna have to remember that.”

Rey picks his pillow up.

On the other side of Finn, Poe sits up at last.

“You guys awake?” he asks blearily.

“Back to sleep, love,” Finn says, tugging him back down again.

THATS THAT ON THAT 4 NOW


End file.
